Exploring Theatre & the Arts in Portland, Oregon

About

Sabrina Miller – Editor and founder

Sabrina Miller and the Radio City Rockettes – Dec. 2010

Portland Stage Reviews was started by local theater lover & wardrobe stagehand, Sabrina Miller. Having worked in the theater industry in some capacity for over 10 years, Sabrina has a great appreciation & much respect for what happens on stage, and what goes into it behind the stage as well.

Portland Stage Reviews will try to encompass anything that happens in Portland that will attract an audience. Broadway shows, Opera, Ballet, smaller theater companies, sketch comedy performances, it doesn’t matter, it will be covered as best it can. Having seen & read so many reviews in local newspapers & blogs in the Portland area, Sabrina wants to bring a different & unique outlook in reviews to you, the reader. Many reviews might come from behind the scenes, not only on how the performance sounds, works, and is executed behind the scenes, but how it reads on stage as well.

Patrons spend quite a bit of money at times to see quality shows. Sabrina wants to make sure you are getting the best bang for your buck. No pomp & circumstance. No snootiness in the reviews. Just honest to goodness thoughts, opinions, tidbits from behind the scenes from a local lover of the arts.

She currently resides downtown close to the Keller Auditorium with her infant son Jack.

Faddah Wolf

Faddah Steve Yuetsu Wolf, a man with just too damn many names, is a 60s/70s throw back ever posing the question to Porpsters, “why all the hating on the hippies?” Though he has a Performing Arts BFA degree, he has been tinkering with computers, software and gadgets since 1987. He has done tech support, QA and various forms of software engineering. An early beta version of his name appears in the “thank yous” to the Yes mid-90s album, “Talk,” for assisting in pulling the midi info on their hard drive back from the depths. Whether he should be thanked or damned for doing so depends on how you feel about the band/album. He also has practiced zen meditation since 1996, which is partly responsible for the growth of his name, and in the last two years has become quite the yoga junkie, preferring his prawna deep fried.

He has been a Burning ManBlack Rock Ranger and led meditation sessions out there at the “playa zendo.” He also is quite a fan of the music Django Reinhardt (the French Gypsy Jazz Guitar Player, not the web programming language), and gave a talk on Gypsy Jazz, as well as music performance, at Portland’s Ignite 9. Thankfully, no one in that audience seems to have been harmed by this experience. His writing can also be found on the blog, ialsowent.com, and he keeps threatening to do something with 140moviereview.com, the latter based on the twitter account. His musings can also be seen at various comedy Open Mics and Showcases around greater Portland. He also refers to himself as “pleasure activist” and “beer snob.” Oh, and he has fallen deeply in love with Portland as a transplant; for it’s strong coffee, stronger women, tasteful micro-crafted beer, and it’s wild, Open Source Heart.

Dennis Nyback

Dennis Nyback is an independent film archivist who operates the Dennis Nyback Film Archive which is comprised of over ten thousand rare short films dating back to 1895. The films are in various formats, although primarily in 16mm. He has created over three hundred film programs that he has taken to many venues around the world. He is also a writer, historian, and teacher. As an undergraduate at the University of Washington in Seattle he concentrated on dance under Ruthanna Boris and Tommy Rall and play writing under David Wagoner. He earned a BA in Psychology. He took a break between his junior and senior years in college to ride freight trains around the country.

He has owned and operated movie theaters in Seattle, New York, and Portland, Oregon. At his Pike Street Cinema in Seattle he produced and directed the stage review Can’t We Be Friends that became the basis of the American Masters Presentation Yours For a Song: The Women of Tin Pan Alley that aired nationally on public television in 1999. His essay Seattle Art and Grind was included in From the Arthouse to the Grindhouse in 2010. He is the co-founder of The Oregon Cartoon Institute.

Andrew Montgomery

Andrew Montgomery has a long and varied history with both performance as well as stage-work throughout his life. At one point in time or other, he could be found singing opera, show-tunes, barbershop, blues, rock, metal, performing stand-up, acting in short indie film productions, DJ’ing in clubs, working as a roadie, light/sound tech, writing and recording commercials and jingles, doing voice-overs, or just about anything else that struck his fancy. A life-long freelance writer, he has written and performed his own work in front of literally tens-of people, and his screen- and stage-plays have received some of the most warmly-written rejection letters from very prestigious publishers that you’ve never heard of. Born in the Cheese-Belt, he relocated to Portland in 1999, learned very quickly about wetness, and how to properly pronounce both “Wilamette” and “Couch”. In July, 2013, he moved to Vancouver, WA, where he lives with his lovely partner, steeped in a life bejeweled with glitter, rhinestones, feathers, and copious amounts of cat hair.